“What is the most important stage of Tiny House & community construction?” Where does it go!
This is a great question that addresses the very foundations of what we believe in individually about the quality and cost of the materials we will build the future with, limiting the toxin load from the materials as they are being created, as well as outgas for the first year or two while living in them. It is also a question of living in smaller pollution and consumption footprint for life, not just talk about it, and the cost to the planet, from a resource, fuel, environment, and human energy calculation. Each person has to evaluate which of these areas of our life’s needs or desires, physical, mental, and immune systems conditions, spiritual, political, and Earth-oriented perspectives or values. This is about considerations if you want to build a house to live in for the rest of your life, to be able to take it with you when you move or leave it to your friends or heirs, this reflects on the materials and size, the SpaceMagic import-free design of your home, tiny as it might be or otherwise interconnects with porchways. What sort of community ethos are you joining and who is in charge? Will you be one of the founders?
Once you take into account that imports send wealth to other places, and generally global corporations make their profits on cheap foreign labor, resources, manufacturing, and transportation to Americans to take our money and jobs back out. If you want your people to be employed you would decide to buy local. If you want to create work, hire local people to create what you want. If you want toxin-free, aged, and proven American made materials, like lumber from Virgin forests, bricks from clays rich in iron, baked hard at high temperatures to last for centuries, or hardware made from the finest iron, brass, copper, and zinc ever mined in the United States. How this is treated and the examples of what can be saved for our grandchildren to also appreciate people with amazing skills turning iron and copper ore, zinc, and other metals into such incredible hardware? Artisans we can learn from again if our people ever want to or need to rebuild our country again. Rather than have the mines to get ore from, grow new trees, or import from other places, why not save the best of the past that is so far better than what can be found instead?
If you want quality like America was once known for, buy it instead of the foreign-made built-to-break and bring you back culture, with oil base plastics, inside and wrapped around, then buy it and build with it or better yet, go out and get it for free. Use your hands, your minds, your imagination, and know that you can save 99% of the materials to build a house from houses, buildings, and barns that already exist virtually for free. You can do it without shipping across oceans, but instead, use some of the 51% of the vintage building materials that comprise what is going into our landfills each year. This means your decision saves resources that are sorely needed, have already been mined, smelted, formed, porcelain-coated, and shipped all around the country, ready to use, like a giant home depot, but nearly free for the picking. How does one choose what to build with or how big without considering where it will go, and who you will then be living with? Who is in charge and decides vital things that set up the foundations, the rules, and who sings in a community chorus with the energy you bring?
What is a flower without a bee or helper to carry pollen all about? Kill them off and nothing lives, like worms, the bees, each play a part.
Every community will have an ethos about these things are important or not to the health and wealth of the community. If all of the people like organic gardens then no one has to eat the poison put on by others who disagree and share the gardens with you. Some would be very upset to see their children suffer for the poisons accidentally put down to kill bugs but hurt humans too. We need bugs, food for frogs, birds, and so many creatures. What will your community policy be?
If you want to help our planet, our species, and our environment socially, not only will you be thinking Tiny Houses to build Pure Salvage Living Villages with, thus a safety net for the 76,000,000 baby boomers hitting the wall. No, this goal is for the kids who need to know that all the parts and pieces for the future, that made this country great, are still hidden before our very eyes and will not only make us free, but teach our children how to once more survive without foreign imports, cheap labor, oil products, energy waste, toxic health issues, and a breakdown in family, community. We are due for some old-fashioned simplicity that modern marketing has nearly extinguished. How do villages and intentional communities teach the children without going to public schools that require jabs, even surprise parents by doing such without permission but a bribe to the child instead? Times are a-changing and some will choose to create alternative communities and this will be one of the issues each community will face… like the size of the houses, the source of power, the lawns versus gardens, and organic versus natural. These are the freedoms at risk which many choose to preserve over city life that may pay much more money but cost much more to experience.
To be fair, I am a purist at the fringe with the elements used in my artistic world of 95% Pure Salvage Tiny Texas Houses. I have pioneered to push the envelope of what is possible in sub-zero carbon footprint sustainable, portable, healthy, 100+ year lifespan, import-free housing that is built entirely in America. I am biased towards my solutions lending themselves toward creating sustainable societies that can survive without taking but instead giving back to the local community as well as the whole planet. That said, my bias exposed, the most important thing you can do is decide what you want to be happy and if that means making the individual decision, regardless of the size of your home, to do things that will benefit not only yourself, but the species, your parents, friends, children, and the generations to follow is important in the final score. Then decide if sub-zero carbon footprint, all-natural, organic, with the energy of our forefathers preserved and respected for the hundreds of years their creations can last should be handed off to others to appreciate and benefit from before throwing in the dump.
Perhaps then decide on what you want to build with, how big, and for how long you want it to last when you are done. How healthy do you want to be once you move in considering environmental causes for illness are now being recognized for numerous ailments, without even getting into cancer? In the big picture, with due respect for the human energy, resources, and ingenuity we have been gifted, what our forefathers built centuries ago, without electricity or gasoline, these things can not be ignored, undervalued, forgotten. If so, we no longer deserve to be taking more from the planet. I believe that the right answer is, reuse, recycle, make it last, reinvent, reconstruct, pass it along, and never ever throw it away until there is nothing left to save. So many things that must be considered besides religion or political party. These are the things that freedom speaks of, the choices to pursue our great dreams on a farm, with a family, a homestead, a village as One.
I have proven the extremes are easily within reach so no one else has to prove it is possible. Now the trick is to let everyone know there is such an alternative, and it only costs human energy, imagination, ingenuity, community, and the other things we have an abundance of in America. Best of all, if we join together, this is also a passion, a fuel for hope, self-sufficiency, self-respect, freedom from debt, and a way out of the rat race at the end, when we need a tiny resting spot the most. Thank you for being part of the dialogue about Tiny Houses and hopefully my vision for a Pure Salvage Living Movement that will make solutions possible even faster and for more people.
Please share, like if you would help us get the word out that solutions are just a short reach away, with faith, Wii, all of us “I”s together can get through the rough times from this winter and spring to build smarter and better when Wii do it again.